STUFF NO ONE CARES ABOUT

Headlines, shmeadlines. Who really gives a rat's ass about Bernie Madoff? Is he really the most hated man in America? Only if you are one of the 5,000 people who he robbed, promising you ridiculously high returns on your money unavailable elsewhere. Why were they unavailable elsewhere? Because it was scam and completely illegal. Con men have no customers without the greedy looking for an easy score. If you had the kind of big dough required to invest with Madoff, you knew full well what the available options were and the kind of returns you can expect for your money. The guy wasn't a carnival barker scamming unsophisticated rubes. Not only should his victims have known better, but they did know better, and cheated anyway.

So now Madoff goes to jail for life and they're still broke because they chased a free lunch when they could afford to buy their own lunch. What, we should feel sorry for these people and buy them lunch now? Like the government is doing with Bernie's colleagues in the banking, investment, insurance and automotive industries? Those guys did more damage to America than Bernie Maddoff ever did. They made over 10 trillion dollars of our collective wealth disappear. To these people, Madoff is the most loved man in America since his dog-and-pony show serves as a neat distraction to their greed and their gross incompetence.

While not may people argue about the need to bail out our core industries, nobody cares a good crap about the fate of the CEOs who ruined everything for everybody. They wouldn't mind seeing a lot of these guys lining up at an arraignment hearing like Bernie Madoff instead in front of a Congressional Committee explaining why they need another 55 billion or our bucks. At the very least they should be charged with Aggravated Stupidity and Greed in the First Degree. Wall Street always made the people who work there rich, just the way it has always operated, but that wasn't enough for this new breed of fools who somehow got elevated to running the show.

When rich isn't enough, what is? Well, nothing is ever enough when you start down that path, not even hanging a Renoir in the bathroom of your private jet. And nobody cares that others were doing it so you thought that made it okay. Wasn't that the rationale for every stupid thing mankind has done? That's how Inquisitions and Nehru suits get their start. That's how we wind up with high school girls with tattoos and tongue piercings, throwing a monkey wrench into the age-old apparatus of identifying the 'hos. When something works, it's best to leave it well enough alone. Nobody cares if you have a better idea when that idea is only to make yourself richer than Bill Gates without going to the trouble of inventing anything revolutionary that is in great demand.

Say what you want about Bill Gates, but he made his $40 billion selling a product people can't seem to get enough of without stealing everything from Post-it notes to pensions funds from his company. And becoming the richest guy around hasn't changed the fact that he still has to be Bill Gates, a dubious fate at best. Ask Bernie Madoff whether the billions he stole made him anything other than a creepy old Scrooge anyone in their right mind would cross the street to avoid. Most of us would rather while away an afternoon with a cat burglar or a high school gym teacher than spend a minute with Bill Gates or Bernie Madoff.

So why should we care all that much if the government takes over the banks for a while? That doesn't make us Cuba or the Soviet Union. Maybe they can fire all the inept greedheads who ran these perfectly good businesses into the ground. They certainly could not do any worse, and besides, the government has long experience in handling a lot more money that any one bank ever has, and doing it fairly well. Can any bank match the efficiency of the Post Office, the Social Security Administration or the military?

Big Government is only a bad thing when it is Stupid Government, and America just decided to do away with that dubious experiment by voting out the Republicans with their bewildering assortment of Christian Fascists, failed corporate princes and aging reactionaries. What they did with the smart guys who used run their party is anyone's guess, but they're all gone and only the angry fools remain. And what are they so angry about when they are the ones who screwed things up so royally? Again, who cares? They did so much damage to America that maybe they ought to just go away. These guys are lucky some of them aren't going to jail for trying to repeal the Bill of Rights, attacking the wrong country for no reason at all, drowning New Orleans, transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the super wealthy (who proceeded to blow it, which the middle class would never have done) and for being complete idiots, which should be a bigger crime than it is.

So, go ahead and hate Bernie Madoff if you like wasting good anger on trifles. He's only a symptom of what went wrong with Corporate America. Corporations need their power stripped, or at least pared back to where it should properly be, in production and the marketplace and out of politics. Nobody would be complaining about the assholes who get rich running our corporations if they didn't screw up so badly, and when they screw up, they screw things up for millions of workers. If they want to get back to their former anonymity, the solution is simple: stop stealing and earn the dough you are paid just like everyone else.

The system is already in place and had been for quite awhile before the current leadership started going all Bernie Madoff on everyone. The young turks who replace these goons, hopefully sooner than later, should realize there's a good life to be had in the corporate boardrooms without the scams. Then nobody will care about your boring asses and you can be rich captains of industry once again. If not, expect the villagers to begin surrounding your mansions with torches and pitchforks the next time you plough through their pension funds to buy yourself a new yacht.